Light My Way

Pastor Leon Aguilera

¹⁰⁵  Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.  ¹⁰⁶ I have sworn, and I will perform it, that I will keep thy righteous judgments.  ¹⁰⁷ I am afflicted very much: quicken me, O Lord, according unto thy word.   (Psalm 119:105–107).

What is God’s will for my life? Am I even on the right path? When I come to a fork in the road, which choice should I make?

This is how so many of us feel about God’s will: confused. We want clarity; we feel confusion. The good news is that God doesn’t leave us in the dark. Not only does He give us a path, but He also provides a lamp to light the way. All in favor of light? Then consider these three, absolutely guaranteed, path-proven guidelines to walking in the light of God’s will.

First, find God’s will in His Word. According to Psalm 119:105, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” The Bible lights up your path so you can navigate the way forward.

When you are uncertain or feel like you’re in a dark place, turn on the light of God’s Word. Make it your daily practice to read the Bible so that you’re not just reading random snippets but beginning to know where to find the answers. Keep a list of particular passages that have given you direction. The Scriptures help you see where your feet are standing and where the path leads. God may not show you miles ahead on the path, but He’ll show you the next step.

Second, seek godly counsel. Your second source of light is advice from wise Christians. Proverbs 12:15 teaches, “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.”Too often we’re tempted to think, I don’t want anyone’s input! I already know what I want to do. If I ask for advice, someone might tell me my plan is a bad idea. The foolish person doesn’t seek or listen to counsel from others before making an important decision. Don’t be indecisive—or decisive on your own. Who are the wise, trustworthy advisers in your life? Who are the solid Christians who want what’s best for you? Who cares more about what God wants for you than what you selfishly want? Advisers don’t coddle you; they coach you.

Third, follow the Spirit of God. Jesus didn’t leave us here as orphans. He gave us the Holy Spirit to be with us forever (John 14:16–18). He’s working on us and in us! “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13). Many people claim to want the Holy Spirit’s guidance, but they skip steps 1 and 2. They don’t fill their souls with God’s Word, and they don’t seek godly counsel. Yet these are the very tools the Spirit of God uses to guide us.

If you don’t fill up on the Word and wise counsel, then you’re not giving the Spirit much to work with. You’re left with only a subjective sense of “the-Lord-told-me-to-do-this.” God will never tell you to do something contrary to His Word or counter to true, godly wisdom. If you insist on deciding against God’s Word and wise counsel, then the results will be entirely your own fault.

Together, these three guidelines provide a powerful decision-making grid. Start with Scripture. Include wise counsel. Rely on God’s Spirit. Then you’ll know your feet are on God’s path, and He will light your way.

Faith on Fire

Pastor Leon Aguilera

 ²⁴ But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵ The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.” (John 20:24-25).

The resurrection of Jesus was the best possible news the disciples could have received, yet not everyone was immediately on board with the story. Thomas was absent when the Lord made His group appearance on that Sunday evening, and he gave a skeptic’s response to the announcement that the other disciples had been with the risen Lord. He demanded proof: “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

Sometimes we judge Thomas’s reaction too harshly. We might think, What a demanding, disrespectful disciple. Who does he think he is? Actually, though his words may strike us as odd, they were sincere, not prideful. Thomas wanted to believe, and he wanted his faith to be authentic.

John 20:20 holds an important detail in Jesus’ original appearance: “And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side.” Thomas was only asking for what he had missed. He was expressing a willingness to believe based upon the same evidence given to his peers. His request was not unreasonable. He didn’t want to doubt; he wanted to believe!

Thomas sincerely longed for what the other disciples had experienced. He was gathering the wood and getting a match—he wanted a faith on fire. Thomas named the obstacle and looked for the reasons he too could have authentic faith in Christ. And in this lies a lesson for us: faith is kindled when you name the obstacle.

If you’re struggling with doubt, identify the obstacle to faith in your life:

·         I got hurt.

·         I have a tough question I don’t have an answer for.

·         I’m discouraged.

·         I honestly don’t understand how Christianity could be true.

Now bring it before the Lord: “God, this is the barrier between You and me.” Produce your strong reservations, and give God an opportunity to kindle faith where there’s doubt. Once you have honestly prayed this way, give God time to answer. Wait on Him.

This is not a casual challenge. If you’re a doubter, get on your knees every night, and bring your barrier before God. Pray with the expectation that He will answer. Ask faithfully, every day for thirty days. God did not disappoint Thomas, and He will not disappoint a sincere seeker. Tell God the obstacle, and He will kindle your faith.

Because He Lives

Pastor Leon Aguilera

 ¹⁰ Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.  ¹¹ For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.

   – 2 Corinthians 4:10-11

Why is Jesus alive? Pause to consider that question for a moment. Yes, He’s alive because He rose from the dead—but why? Yes, He’s alive because He is God—but why? Yes, He’s alive “because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.” (Acts 2:24)—but why? What purpose does His present life serve?

Over and over the New Testament tells us Jesus is alive and active. He makes intercession for us, He comes before the throne of heaven as our mediator, and He makes requests before the Father for our moment-by-moment needs (Hebrews 7:25). Payment for sin is complete; that’s a past accomplishment (John 19:30). Someday Christ will rule the earth; that’s a future promise (Revelation 19:15). But what about today?

Today Christ lives to bring His victorious power to bear upon our character. Not only does He offer victory over sin and death and give forgiveness to all who believe, He also wants to live His life through us. That is what Christian living is all about—“ that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.”

The true Christian life is Christ in you.

Christ has made no provision for you—on your own, in your own power—to live the Christian life. It’s a brand of living far superior to the Christ-in-my-own-strength program, which only leads to disappointment, exhaustion, and failure. He is the only one who ever lived it successfully. While you can seek knowledge and understanding, and you can serve, worship, and walk with Him, you have zero power or personal strength to resource true, full obedience. There’s nothing in you that can enable you to live for Him—not an ounce of strength, not a smidgen of will power, not a thimbleful of perseverance to make Christian living possible.

The only source of power is the exchanged life—Christ living through you. Your part is to get out of the way and let Him. When you do and people see spiritual energy in you, whose is it? Not yours, but Christ’s. If people see anything worthwhile in your life, if there is anything eternal and lasting, it is the actual life of Jesus Christ flowing through you. He is the only true resource, the only power for lasting transformation.

This powerful, simple truth can absolutely change your life. Consider this a turning point, an invitation to the exchanged life—Christ living in you. It begins with honesty, admitting your sin and powerlessness to live for the Lord on your own. Because of His death, once you die to yourself, “the life of Jesus” can be manifest in you.

The Reasons Jesus Had to Suffer

Pastor Leon Aguilera

 ⁹ In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. ¹⁰ Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.   – 1 John 4:9-10

No one disputes that Jesus Christ suffered on the cross. But the idea that His suffering was necessary has been the subject of scorn from those who have criticized and ridiculed Christianity through the centuries. The truth that Jesus had to suffer to pay for our sin is also what sets Christianity apart.

Muslims, for example, show respect for the person of Christ, but see the cross as a stumbling block. They regard His atonement through suffering as foolishness. Friedrich Nietzsche dismissed the very concept of Jesus’ suffering, saying, “God on a cross—preposterous!”

As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we resolutely stand against such ridicule and embrace His cross. This is a vivid illustration of 1 Corinthians 1:18: “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.”

It was essential for Jesus to suffer:

To pay for the sins of mankind. First John 4:10 says, “[God] loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” The key word is propitiation, meaning payment.  It wasn’t enough for Him to die.  Jesus had to pay a debt—our debt, for our sin. The payment was necessary.

To satisfy the demands of God’s wrath. As much as God loves you, He hates your sin with a holy, burning hatred beyond comprehension. The only way He could embrace you in spite of your sin was for someone else—someone perfect and holy—to pay for it (Romans 5:1).

To purchase the opportunity for our sins to be forgiven. No longer do you have to carry your sin. You can be forgiven. God laid all your sinfulness on Jesus as He willingly suffered and died upon the cross. The debt was paid, opening the door to your forgiveness.

To provide the way to eternal life. To have a gift, you must choose to receive it (Romans 6:23). Do you know Jesus Himself is the gift of eternal life? His suffering is the reason that gift is possible. 

The glory of the gospel is this: Jesus paid a debt He did not owe, because we owed a debt we could not pay. While we are the ones who need to be saved from God’s wrath, He is the one who saves us—through His Son, Jesus Christ. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

You can be forgiven and washed clean, because Jesus is the propitiation. He gave His life to restore your relationship with God. As the Father laid all the sinfulness of the world on His Son, Jesus suffered and died, offering forgiveness and eternal life to all who believe (John 3:16).

Teach Me to Pray

Pastor Leon Aguilera

¹ And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. ² And he said unto them, When ye pray…..  – Luke 11:1–2

Roughly 60 percent of Americans claim they pray daily. Another nearly 20 percent claim to pray weekly. Those statistics suggest that all kinds of praying is going on, yet there also seems to be evidence that what we call “prayer” doesn’t really fit God’s definition or expectations. If we dig under people’s reports about praying a lot, we would discover that many are going through the motions, treating prayer the same way they approach rolling dice. Many feel frustrated about prayer even as they try to practice it. They often mention prayer without actually addressing God. When they do voice their prayers, they are talking to someone they don’t even know. To them, God is the complete stranger on the street they might ask for help if things get bad enough. How sad and empty prayer must feel for many of them—for many of us.

As we develop the core disciplines of a sincere faith, we must include work on prayer. Even those of us who have grown up around praying people need instruction. Who better to talk to us about prayer than Jesus Christ.

The twelve disciples spent three years hanging out with Jesus. They watched Him, traveled with Him, and listened to Him. There is no record they ever asked Him, “Lord, teach us to teach,” even though He was a master teacher. Not once did they say, “Lord, teach us how to do miracles,” though we know He worked awesome wonders. As far as we know, the disciples’ only request like this was, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

With a front row seat to the life of Jesus Christ, what truly captured the disciples’ attention was His prayer life. Jesus had a habit of retreating from the demanding crowds and spending time alone with His Father in conversation, as seen in Mark 1:35. “And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.” Exposed to Jesus 24/7, the disciples concluded, “The thing we’ve got to figure out is the prayer thing. Jesus has that going on!”

Not surprising that Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, eternally in perfect communion with the Father, prioritized prayer. Jesus responded to the disciples’ request by introducing what we now call the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:2–4, see also the longer version recorded in Matthew 6:9–13).

Let’s camp today on the disciples’ request. They not only went to the right instructor, but they also went with the right intent. This was more than a plain “how-to” request; it was a “give-us-the-desire-to-pray” petition. After noting a pattern of prayer in Jesus’ life, they longed to see it replicated in their own lives. They saw Jesus slip out of the house to pray in the early morning while they rolled over for a little more sleep. They watched Jesus stop to thank His Father at various times, drawing attention to the bigger picture (see Jesus’ conversation with His Father outside Lazarus’s tomb, John 11:41–42).

Yes, they wanted direction from Jesus regarding prayer, but they also wanted motivation. Before He even gave them the pattern of the Lord’s Prayer, He graciously encouraged them with the words,“When ye pray.” Not “if you pray” but “when you pray”—Jesus knew the disciples would pray. Driven by circumstances or as a spiritual discipline, the disciples would be talking to the Father in prayer.

They needed that expectation as much as we do. Our failure to pray rarely rises from lack of technique or subject matter. We often fail at prayer because we don’t keep at it. We try prayer but quickly give up. Yet prayer is the breathing of our spiritual life. Just as we can’t afford to stop pulling air into our lungs, so we also can’t survive spiritually without the healthy respirations of prayer.

When the disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray,” that simple request was in and of itself a prayer. Make that your persistent prayer for a few days. Ask Him out loud. If a specific direction or thought doesn’t come to mind, then read and reflect on the Lord’s Prayer. Spin off from certain lines of Jesus’ prayer, and expound with your own words. By giving us a model, Jesus wasn’t inviting rote repetition; He was offering a healthy pattern. Just as He taught His disciples to pray, so He is willing to teach us all things (John 14:26)—including how to pray.

Our Daily Bread

Pastor Leon Aguilera

¹¹ Give us this day our daily bread.  – Matthew 6:11

Our heavenly Father invites us to bring our requests to Him too. When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He included this line: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Seven practical, straightforward words—but what was He really inviting us to ask for?

This is more than a prayer for food. “Our daily bread” represents all the basics we require. It’s such a practical prayer that covers four essential needs in our lives:

1. Income. We can pray for adequate income for every household—not so our wants will be met, but so our needs will be met. When we’re praying about financial needs, we know we’re praying according to God’s will. Just a few verses later, Jesus tells us not to worry about our basic needs.“Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.” (6:31–32). God doesn’t want us to worry about our basic needs; He wants us to trust Him to provide.

Now it might not be God’s will for you to have the exact job you’ve been dreaming of, but it is God’s will for you to have a job. It is God’s will for the physical needs in your house to be met, and you can pray boldly with those needs in mind.

2. Physical health. God never offers a universal, blanket promise for good health for everyone. But He is the God who heals. He has never stopped being all that He is, so the God who healed Naaman (2 Kings 5) and the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years (Matthew 5) is the same God today. Healing is for today too. You can pray for physical health. If God has a different plan, He will reveal it to you. When You have physical needs, and when you need the grace to endure, come confidently to Him! “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16).

3. Emotional health. Every individual has basic emotional needs. There is so much lack of wellness around us today. People are depressed, weighed down by anxiety, bitterness, fear, and apathy. We can ask, “Father, I need my daily bread of emotional sustenance. I long to be able to handle things. I need to know I’m not going to lose it. Please give me the peace of knowing I’m going to be okay. I need You to calm the waters in my life, God, and make me a stable person. In Jesus’ name.” With confidence we can pray for emotional health.

4. Spiritual health. We can pray for the salvation of loved ones. We know the Lord “is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9). We can call out to God to bring wandering children back home, back to Him. We can ask Him to save a spouse and to rescue a daughter-in-law. We can call out to God for these things with assurance.

All of this—income and physical, emotional, and spiritual health—is encompassed by the term “daily bread,”and God invites us to ask Him for what we need.  Just like children who run to their parents to meet their needs, so we can ask “Our Father in heaven” today, every day, to meet our everyday needs.

In Earth, As It Is in Heaven

Pastor Leon Aguilera

⁶ Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.  – Matthew 6:10

When we hear the Lord’s Prayer recited, we usually hear emphasis on the words kingdom and will. It sounds like this: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done”

We can subtly change the meaning of wording by altering what we accentuate. Try praying it like this: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done” (my emphasis). Whose kingdom—yours or God’s? God’s! In prayer, you submit your will and your territory to God. You bring your burdens before Him, not as an equal, but seeking and expecting His will to be done and His kingdom to prevail. You will be able to look back and say, “When I started to pray about this, I was praying the way I saw things. But as the weeks became months, I started praying differently because I came to see things God’s way. That reality changed what I asked for and the way I asked. Now I want what God wants for my life.”

Sometimes prayer changes things—and sometimes prayer changes me. And I start to pray more in line with what God wants than what I want. Prayer is part of the furnace God uses to fabricate His will. Praying puts us where He can work on us. That’s why we pray in submission, “Thy will be done.”

Submission comes before wide-open prayer. Let’s be honest—many of us ask for silly or selfish things, or maybe we insist on our own way. But God doesn’t rule by committee, so through prayer, we submit and align our wills with God’s. That’s why Jesus said, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” (John 15:7). That’s not an open, unconditional invitation to ask for whatever you want, no strings attached. When you get yourself to a place of true submission to God, you can ask whatever you wish because you won’t ask for dumb stuff. You want what He wants, because your will is submitted to His.

We pray for God’s will to be done “in earth as it is in heaven.” How do you suppose God’s will works in heaven? If God says to the angels, “Build some more mansions,” do you think they respond, “We’re tied up right now,” or “We’ve got some supply problems, and the permits aren’t coming through”? I’m going to suggest that in heaven things happen exactly the way God wants, on time, every time. So when we pray, “Thy will be done,” we’re declaring, “God, we long for it to be like it is in heaven. We want our lives to reflect the state where what You want happens on time, every time.” That’s a prayer of submission.